Oops...I did grow something!

After I accidentally killed all of my seedlings by leaving them out on a too windy day, Jon encouraged me to go buy some plants.  And I did, couple tomatoes, some cilantro and peppers.  But I felt like I was going to pass out every time I tried to plant them, so Jon planted them for me while I pointed.  And he's been pretty much in charge of watering them ever since. 

They are very sad little plants, but I got a few cherry tomatoes!  Can't wait to have them in a good salad...  Tomatoes are such hardy buggers if you leave them alone.  Try throwing a rotten tomato into your compost pile and see what pops up next year...I guarantee you will have some volunteer tomato plants.

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I like getting up early...

Otherwise I might miss these scenes.  The fog from overnight slowly fading away as the sun peeks its head up.  No wonder my hair is so curly in the morning when I wake up!

Side note: I'm sure my husband would scoff at me for saying I like to get up early.  Well...because I also like to sleep in...a lot....but I really do like getting up early!

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from around the farm

Spunky little things aren't they. I wish I would have had a camera with me when one of them was laying with a chicken yesterday.

Here's an older one the morning after a heavy rain (the stuff is still set up from the Pekin ducks). First are the runner ducks and then I find the other four ducks...

Here's a shot of Jamie's brief time on the mower. She's always been more of an artistic/abstract type and apparently that carries over into her mowing...

She never made the upcoming turn but she did manage to stop before running into the tree. 

POOLS FOR EVERYONE (wait where's our pool!?)

Here's Max chillin' in his own personal pool. I've had to move his to the east side of the house so the ducks/geese quit getting into it and making it all muddy. They have their own pool too.

 They boars have really mangled their plastic pool but it's still holding water. It'll work for this summer. I have grand plans for next year though.

Even the cattle get to swim. They're still skinny and we can't figure out why so we moved them to a big area with shade trees and a pond to see if that would help.

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Garden update....

And here it is....


























Wait....can't you see the garden..............it's exploding right now!













Exploding with weeds!

I failed this year with a garden and I'm okay with that.  At the exact time that I needed to be planting was the exact time that I was the sickest in my pregnancy.  Some days it was morning, afternoon and evening sickness.  And the sheer exhaustion was a little too much on some days.  I really miss my garden this year, especially right now.  Right now, people are eating their own home grown juicy ripe tomatoes and I'm buying tomatoes in the store.  It seems so wrong to buy tomatoes in the store when they are so easy to grow at home.  Not to mention that there is something wrong with tomatoes that are bought in certain stores and at certain times in the season.  I curse myself sometimes for not signing up for a CSA this year.

Next year.  That's what I keep telling myself.  I will have birthed this baby, had a few months to settle into a routine and it should be right around Spring that I'm feeling like myself again. 

So for now I will just keep looking at pictures of my garden from last year.  And as soon as those seed catalogs come this winter, I'm gonna start circling and making lists....

Sigh.....like I said...next year!

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Piggies and a new calf

More babies on the farm!

We knew one of the mama pigs was going to have her babies very soon, but we were pleasantly surprised to check on them Sunday night to find five baby pigs!  Which was rather odd, because the next morning we could only find four.  We have video proof that there was five, but for the life of us we could not find the fifth one. 

 They were so curious and came right up to me.  But if you moved too fast, they would squeal and run away.  These guys are also tiny.  They are just about the size of small kittens.

Their favorite position in the world is to be lined up head to tail with each other.  It's funny to catch them sleeping like that.

Aren't babies wonderful?  They were out exploring the world and ran squealing back into the lean to when a big pig grunted at them.

Our cows just hanging out.  Poor girls, they have so many flies around their face.  We have been trialing a fly trap, but I'm not so sure how much it is working.

And there is the new baby!  I love how all the calves have different coloring.  This one is a girl...finally!  There is way too much testosterone in this round of calves.  I think we are up to 7-8 boys and 2 girls.  Not exactly the numbers that you want.  But we will have plenty of grass finished beef in a couple years. 

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Bob is in rehab...

Bob had a rather unfortunate run in with Max.  Max nearly killed the poor duck.

We pulled up late on the 4th of July and I could see Bob right up by the porch by himself.  The headlights shown on him and he didn't even move a muscle.  I immediately knew something was wrong, because ducks do not like to be by themselves and his feathery hairdo was all askew.

As I walked up to him, I saw the damage.  Max had ripped out a huge chunk of feather on his back and sides.  He even ripped out some feather on his head.  I started to pray the Prayer of All Mothers "Lord...give me strength....", because that dang dog had done it again. 

I picked up Bob and took him inside to wash him off as Jon scolded Max.  Poor Bob's skin was all bright pink where his feathers were missing.  I hoped that by washing off some dog slobber that Bob would have a chance.  And don't think that I didn't want to smear triple antibiotic ointment on him, because I did.  But I also didn't want to mess with his digestive system if he started to clean his feathers.

So, we put him in a cordoned off area of the shed and hoped for the best.  I should also say that poor Bob was in shock the entire time.  He didn't even move at all when I set him down or picked him up.  The next morning he was running around and a little bit and his skin wasn't so bright pink.  I took that as a good sign. 

This Bob when he was little...wasn't he the cutest!  Now keep in mind, that I just assume Bob is a male, I don't actually know.

This is Bob now.  You can barely see a few spots where his feathers are starting to grow in.  Oh, and right at that moment he was falling.  He is walking with a huge limp, which is why he is in rehab, aka "The Duck Pen".

He was all alone for a couple days, but I couldn't stand to see him lonely.  So, I captured a few stray ducks.  I could tell he immediately brightened up and started to shake his tail feathers.  Lonely animals are sad to see, because all they really want to do is be by each other.

So, hopefully Bob is on the mend and we scared the crap out of Max so bad that he won't do this again.  But you just never know with that dog...

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What a nice summer day...

A little relaxing in the hammock...



Watching a few duckies stroll on by...



Admiring some pretty flowers...



Smiling at the spunky kitty...

AND THEN BEING ATTACKED!!!!

By a puppy who really really wants to play...

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Dear Internet...

I shake my fists at you!  Work!  Every time I sit down to do a blog post, the Internet decides to take a rest...very irritating I tell you.

Some random thoughts:

I've been cooking a little bit more lately, which makes both of us very happy!

First up some grilled pizza.  I've been trying to use the grill outside, so that we don't heat up the house.  Grilled pizza on a pizza stone was just the trick.  I was a little nervous about using the pizza stone on the grill, because I've heard you could crack it.  But this is a much better alternative to heating up my stove inside to 500 degrees for an hour.

I usually make my crust from scratch, but this is a ball of dough from Trader Joe's.  You just stretch it out and lay it down on to some yellow cornmeal to keep it from sticking.  See the wooden handled thing that the pizza is on?  Get one if you are going to make a lot of pizza on the stone.  This one was pretty cheap, I think it was from Bed, Bath and Beyond.

I just warmed up my grill to around 400-500 degrees.  My recipe called for 500 degrees in a stove for an hour, but that made me too nervous.  And let me warn you, it takes a little practice to actually hit the pizza on the stone without spilling everything.  One more reason to make pizza on a grill!

Can you say delicious?  I need to remember to split the dough next time.  The dough was too thick, especially in the middle so it didn't get done all the way.  Next time!

I also made up some breakfast burritos mainly for Jon.

I've never been a huge breakfast fan.  I'd rather have the same type of cereal for a year than eat eggs.  But when I started to become intolerant to milk I had to branch out a bit.  I've slowly learned to like different types of eggs.  What did me in was a bite of Jon's Waffle House egg sandwich.  Oh my...it was heaven!  There are no Waffle Houses in Nebraska, but we stopped at one in Missouri on the way back from visiting some family. 

These were actually pretty good, if I do say so...  The recipe called for Ore-Ida potato chunks, but I just cut up some potatoes, threw some olive oil on them and baked them for ten minutes.  I have this thing for frozen foods...I'm not a big fan.  I don't even like to go down the frozen food aisle, except when I can't get my craving for Digiornios rising crust cheese pizza any other way.  Can you tell I'm a pizza freak?

This burrito recipe and another one I'm going to make tonight are from the book Don't Panic Dinner's in the Freezer.  Excellent book about making freezer meals.  I like making simple recipes with few ingredients and as much homemade as possible.  This book fits the bill.  There are a couple exceptions, but I've learned to work around that.

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Farm Update

Well that was fun. I sat down to start working on a blog post and the power went out. It's not a big deal to go turn the generator on (other than the cost) but it's definitely not good for our appliances. Even when the power doesn't go off, I'm fairly certain our energy situation is not helping our appliances. It seems like the generator's power is not steady enough and is causing certain things to act funny. For example, we've had to switch to battery powered alarm clocks because our plugin clocks weren't keeping proper time. They could be off as much as an hour in a day's time. And a lot of times something like a fan will speed up or slow down in sync with the sound of the generator.

I'm confident we will get solar, I just don't know when. Hoping for this year still but we shall see. I look forward to the day when I can hope for sunshine instead of just wind.

I told you that our cows are getting skinny. The main reason is more than likely because they (half of them anyway) have calved and are nursing. But we're not 100% sure what's normal body condition. Part of the problem, though, is the flies. We haven't done anything for fly control on the cattle because most methods involve chemicals. We knew of a walk through fly trap you could make but I was having trouble finding plans to build it and I would have even more trouble finding the time. Jamie found a different kind of fly trap that simulates a large animal and traps the flies that way. It sounds great and we can order it, which will save me the time of figuring out how to build it. It should be hear next week.

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